1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal having a function of converting items on a display from text into speech and to a text-to-speech method of the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, as mobile terminals, mobile phones speaking aloud the names of function etc. set by key operations have been proposed (see for example Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 11-252216). Such a mobile phone has a plurality of key operation units, a controller for setting a function corresponding to one or more key operations of the key operation units among a plurality of functions provided in the phone, and a speech synthesizer for outputting by speech the name of the function set linked with the key operations.
Further, as a system employing the speech output function, an e-mail system enabling a sender to select the speech quality to be used for converting text to speech at the receiving side when sending text by e-mail has been proposed (see for example Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-185055).
In a mobile terminal having the above text-to-speech conversion function, the function is realized by transferring the text to the engine (controller and speech synthesizer) for conversion to speech.
However, the web or other installed browsers will notify drawing information displaying text to the mobile terminal side, but will not notify the actual text for conversion to speech. The drawing information is notified with the text divided into small sections, so if notifying these to the engine as they are, a sentence will be frequently interrupted. Further, a sequence of notification of the text will not always be from the top of the display, therefore if converting the text to speech in the sequence of notification, a suitable sentence will not be obtained. Further, according to a style of the drawing, even text on the same row may be notified with deviated coordinate values, therefore will not be able to be treated as text on the same row.
Further, it is known to modify the browser side and add a text-to-speech interface to realize text-to-speech conversion, but even in this case, general sites (HTML etc.) cannot be displayed. Only specific sites can actually be handled. Further, since the browser is modified, the drawing greatly differs from that of the ordinary browser (state where all of the displayed text is linked to). Browser viewing is therefore restricted in many ways.